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63
Community Care
Visiting
Visiting of subnormal patients is carried out by the mental
health social workers or health visitors and, with the co-operation of
health visitors, special attention has been paid to the need of the
pre-school child. This has indicated that there is a special need for
nursery care or classes and some special home visiting in the future.
Special Training Centre
Kingston Training Centre received its first trainees on the
6th January 1965 under Surrey County Council. The centre was
transferred to Kingston on 1st April and was officially opened by The
Worshipful the Mayor, Alderman C.MoJudge, J.P., on Friday the 10th
September 1965. The centre was originally built to accommodate a
total of 93 trainees but by the end of the year 98 trainees were
attending. 25 places are at present allocated for trainees resident
in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
The centre comprises a special care unit for severely
subnormal children, a junior training centre for children between the
ages of five and sixteen, and an adult training centre and workshops
for both sexes over the age of sixteen. The junior centre is divided
into three classes at present. The children in Class I have an age
range of five to eight years. This is the admission class and the
programme is geared to the basic training of a two-year old child, the
emphasis being therefore on play therapy, basic training habits, i.e.
toilet training, feeding, and dressing themselves. It is hoped to
start a new class for children under five so that training can start
even earlier, but this is dependent upon the prior provision of other
adult workshops.
Transfer to Class II is decided at staff meetings, not on
chronological age, but on the child's emotional stability and
educational development In this class the age range is eight to
twelve years. More formal education now begins, with concentration
on recognition of everyday words and applying them to a given situation.
By this time the children are usually toilet trained and able to act on
their own initiative, but still under supervision.
In Class III the age range is twelve to sixteen years, and
here the results of training through the centre begin to appear. The
children are taken out in small groups with the teacher to put into
practice the things they have been learning in the class room. As
they approach their sixteenth birthday they spend short sessions in the
workshops learning the different routine of a work situation compared
with a school situation.